What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is a fairly new social media platform that you may have heard buzzing around your local dive-bar, restaurant, or clothing store. Basically, Foursquare allows its users to post where they are shopping, eating, or drinking so that all of their friends can check it out, which is wonderful word-of-mouth marketing for businesses.
If your restaurant is buzzing, everyone on Foursquare is going to know about it. Foursquare also rewards its users by crowning the most frequent visitors as mayors of a certain location. In order to be crowned as mayor on Foursquare, you need to “check-in” to a certain place the most number of times.
Foursquare is a little different from other social media sites as it is pretty exclusive to smart phones. It would be pretty difficult for you to pull out your laptop everytime you walked in to a coffee shop or restaurant, but Foursquare is available on practically every smartphone out there including: iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Palm, and ovi by Nokia.
Foursquare Promotions
Although a lot of businesses on Foursquare don’t offer rewards for “mayor” status, some companies are definitely jumping on the bandwagon. Who you ask? Here are some well-known companies Foursquare “mayor” promotions:
- Starbucks is the first company to offer nationwide discounts for its “mayors.”
- UK Dominos offers a free pizza for its “mayors.”
- Checker’s restaurant gives “mayors” a free milkshake every time they come in.
- The “mayor” of Pizza Hut receives a free breadsticks every time they order a large pizza.
Businesses are coming up with a lot of different creative ways to promote themselves through Foursquare “mayor” promotions and also for “check-in’s”. If you are looking for a list of participating companies to draw ideas from, take a look at this Ranker blog from a self-proclamed social media junkie.
The only problem that I can see with the “mayor” program is its unattainability. If you are frequenting restaurants that are extremely popular, then your chances of becoming a “mayor on Foursquare is pretty slim, but apparently that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Foursquare Badges
Badges are another cool feature from Foursquare that takes a look at your “check in” patterns and offers different badges based on your habits that all of your friends can see. Businesses can market their brands with this feature by offering partner badges. In order for Foursquare users to unlock partner badges, they need to “follow” the brand page on Foursquare, and they can find the brands on this page: http://foursquare.com/pages.
Businesses can offer expert tips on their page about how their fans can unlock secret partner badges. Some companies are offering badge promotions, but honestly a lot of it is just bragging rights amongst friends. SWSW music festival really took advantage of this feature with some really original badges.
Here’s a list that includes some of SWSW’s badges:
- Platformer — “Check in on three services that use foursquare API. OAuth FTW!”
- foursquare with foursquare — “Yo Dawg, I heard you liked to play foursquare.” If you do, you can play it at the foursquare court in the Pepsi MAX lot. You’ll be able to score some foursquare swag in the process.
- Disco Nap — “Sometimes you need to recharge more than just your phone back at the hotel. No shame in announcing an afternoon Disco Nap.”
- SXSW Bender — “Four nights out past Cinderella’s bedtime.”
- 10 Gallon Swarm — “Lasso up 2,499 of your closest friends and check in around Austin!” Everything really is bigger in Texas, I guess!
- SXSW Hangover — “Out past 3am? Woah. What time is that first panel tomorrow… or is that today?”
- Name Dropper — “Who do you know? Shout it out!”
- SXSW Bar Crawl — “5 bars + 3 hours = harder than it looks.”
- SXSW Far Far Away — “There’s more to Austin than SXSW. Explore!”
- Golden Ticket — “Follow Big Boi on foursquare, check in at SXSW and hope Grandpa Joe is on your side.” This badge will be awarded randomly for checkins around Austin; unlocking it earns you a ticket to foursquare’s Monday night concert with Big Boi.
So if you are a small business and you haven’t jumped on the Foursquare bandwagon, then its time to do so. Its a fool proof way that lets your customers do the promotion for you with cool promotions and rewards for their loyalty. Foursquare it!
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